Doherty: did not receive a bonus as an AIB main board executive director in 2008

The furore over the €40m in delayed bonuses awarded to AIB Capital Markets staff for 2008 is set to flare up again at a hearing of an AIB 'whistle blower' case at the Employment Appeals Tribunal on Monday week.


The resumed case involves Brian Purcell, who says he was dismissed from the bank after reporting improper accounting procedures at AIB Capital Markets in early 2008. He says he accessed accounts of AIB Capital Markets colleagues to see whether he alone had not been paid bonuses. But AIB says his dismissal was due to his accessing accounts and followed several internal hearings.


The details about the bonuses released in a Dáil question confirm that, in 2008, over 2,200 staff received bonuses ranging from €160,000 for senior executives and dealers to €10,000 for clerical employees.


Purcell is expected to argue that accessing accounts is a regular occurrence by bank employees and does not automatically lead to dismissal.


Former Capital Markets boss Colm Doherty, who went onto be managing director of AIB before officially leaving the bank last month, did not receive a bonus as an AIB main board executive director in 2008. In the previous year, he received a €800,000 bonus as part of his €1.66m pay.


Larry Broderick, general secretary of the IBOA union, which traditionally did not recruit staff at AIB Capital Markets, said the payments of bonuses to senior executives had contributed to the destruction of the banks.


AIB said it did not formally contest the Capital Markets bonus claims following legal direction.


"The bank was required to submit a defence to the claim by swearing an affidavit that the bank had a bona fide defence and that the defence was not being entered solely for the purpose of delaying judgement being entered," an AIB spokesman said.


"The bank was in possession of legal advice that the bonus awards were contractual obligations and it had no grounds for denying this. Having reviewed the Master of the High Court's findings, the bank's external legal adviser expressed his view that this was designed to send a message to the bank not to force other employees to come before him to enforce their entitlement to bonus."


Meanwhile, the National Treasury Management Agency paid its staff performance bonuses for 2009, finance minister Brian Lenihan said last week. In response to a parliamentary question from Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd, Lenihan said in most cases staff have a performance-related pay element to their contracts.


A spokesman for the NTMA declined to give any details of the size of the bonuses or how many staff received them. However, Lenihan said earlier this year that new NTMA chief executive John Corrigan was paid a bonus of €200,000 for 2009.


Lenihan said the NTMA has secured an 8% reduction in overall remuneration in 2010 compared to 2009. The agency is known to have the highest pay rates in the public sector.